Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/291

 "Well, who more natural for a father to seek than his son?"

"My father!" Ethel said. "You're talking about my father?"

"Before he was your father. I knew him! He was about St. Florentin quite a little in the old days—quite a little! You may remember I would not have him marry my daughter. So they ran off. I knew—there was a girl to go to Resurrection Rock."

Ethel flung herself at him and with her little fists clenched tight she pummeled him on the chest. "You lie—you lie—you lie! My father! You lie—you lie—"

Mercifully at that moment, the shock of it stunned her from thinking beyond the reference directed to her father; she could not realize what it meant between herself and Barney and what was the purpose of her grandfather in telling this to her. Besides, she refused all truth to it. Her grandfather, always the enemy of her dead father, was slandering him now; that was all she could think. "Oh, you lie—you lie."

He caught her fists and held her brutally before him. He saw that he had not at all convinced her; but he had not expected to simply by this statement of the false before combining it with what was true. He was too old and shrewd in experience to fail to know how a truth told may carry with it a lie.

"Who was his father then?" he demanded of his granddaughter, half shaking her. "Do you know? Then tell me! I don't know, of course; paternity's not like maternity; but his mother— Do you know who she was? Agnes here!" Suddenly he dropped Ethel and gestured horridly with both hands. "Your father and your father's friend—Agnes!"